Fielding the son of a brave but foolish and spendthrift army officer, who retired at age 33 on half-pay, to a country estate in Dorset bought by his wife’s parents. Henry Fielding the oldest of 6 children.
Fielding’s mother died when he was eleven; a belligerent and awkward child, growing up in a Squire Western kind of atmosphere. His father re-married to a Catholic woman - Henry has a lifelong grudge against Catholicism - quarrelled with his in-laws over custody of the children.
Henry sent to Eton, the most exclusive school in England, where he gains a taste for classical literature, but regularly gets into trouble. At age 18 he tries to abduct a fifteen-year-old heiress, but fails.
Book 4, Ch. 6 (168): why Tom doesn’t try to abduct Sophia - difference between love and theft.
Contrast with I.10 (77) - the Blifils want to get Allworthy’s sister without loving her.
V.3 (208): more detail on Western’s expectations for his daughter.
Fielding studies law at Leiden (cheaper than Oxford or Cambridge), then makes his living for eight years as a playwright in London - satires and romantic comedies.
James Harris: “Had his life been less irregular (for irregular it was, and spent in a promiscuous intercourse with persons of all ranks) his pictures of human kind had neither been so various, nor so natural. . . . he could not have written as he did without living as he had.”
Tells Harris he is equally familiar with lust and with love. Gambles and drinks to excess.
Fielding led the most “un-writerly” life of the great English writers.
1734 marries for love Charlotte Cradock, model for Sophia (IV.2, p. 154). She dies ten years later; two of their three children die young. Her maid stays on to keep house; Fielding gets her pregnant and marries her, 1747 (compare Tom’s sense of obligation towards Molly Seagrim, V.5., p. 212).
Fielding writes three novels:
Joseph Andrews (1742) - inspired by contempt for Richardson’s Pamela.
Tom Jones (1749) - his masterpiece.
Amelia (1751) - inspired by nostalgia for Charlotte.
Makes his living as a lawyer and crime-busting magistrate - sentences people to death, but opposed to public executions.
Dies in Lisbon, his health broken by the life he has led.
Tom Jones:Will enter the novel by way of the issue of over-determination: what are the real motives for our behavior, and what is the interaction between multiple motives.
Fielding became a novelist through exasperation with Richardson’s Pamela: he first wrote a parody of it, called Shamela, and then a comic reversal in Joseph Andrews.
Plot of Pamela is simple: Pamela is a beautiful and naieve girl from the country who works as a maid for a country squire. The squire tries everything to seduce her, but she holds on to her virtue. Finally he proposes marriage: she accepts, and becomes a lady. After marriage, her piety reforms her husband’s previous immorality.
In Shamela, Fielding assumes that Pamela’s rejection of her master’s sexual advances is a cunning way of leading him on; she is socially ambitious, and her master is too stupid to see that he is the one being exploited.
Fielding is a brilliant psychologist, but he does tend to assume that one motive rules in the end, while others are just used to screen it. It doesn’t really matter whether characters are conscious of their own true motives - whether Thwackum, for example, is a conscious or unconscious hypocrite.
Issues arising from the Pamela situation:
1. Fielding hates it when religion is used as a disguise for vulgar motives such as lust, greed or ambition. Subtitle of Pamela is Virtue Rewarded - if it’s done for a reward, can it still be virtue? II.4. (p. 100) - hypocrites are the greatest danger to religion.
2. In general, Fielding is suspicious of ambition. It is an intrinsically bad motive, because hierarchy should be preserved. Tom, for example, accepts that he has no right to woo Sophia; the Blifil brothers are bad for aspiring to rise by marrying Allworthy’s sister (54 - though Allworthy gets it wrong - he assumes that because Bridget is unattractive she must be marrying for love. He is blind both to Bridget’s lust and Blifil’s avarice.)
Molly Seagrim deserves what she gets for putting on Sophia’s gown - because you have to be born to such clothes.
Tom never thinks of making a fortune by hard work in order to win Sophia later - in his world, you get a job either through influence, or by buying it (as with a commission in the army, VII.12, p. 302).
By agreeing to marry her squire, Pamela proved that ambition was her real motive all along.
3. The only reliable proof of Virtue is action that accords with “Primitive Christianity” - generosity, unselfishness, brotherly love, “taking no thought for the morrow.”
II.5. (p. 73) - Fielding’s hatred for the Dissenting or Methodist doctrine of Grace, or exalting Faith over Works.
Captain Blifil argues that Virtue is an inner state of being in favor with God, and that Charity may make you “guilty of supporting vice” (73). Similarly, Thwackum likes to “clap a judgement” on people, as in V.2. (171-172). Such people are hypocritical, sanctimonious and, typically, socially inferior.
The Dissenting preference for Faith over Works has a Classical equivalent in the Stoic doctrine of apatheia - “freedom from passion.”
This is the point of the Man of the Hill’s story: VIII.15 (391) - the Man prefers meditating on philosophy to human involvement - his loathing for humanity corresponds to Calvinist belief in depravity.
Stoicism is another way of denying the life of action (402); Tom’s natural impulses are towards doing good to others. Earlier, he had saved the Man of the Hill from robbers; but the Man feels no reciprocal obligation.
Another point of the Man’s long story is that his wayward youth leads him towards disengagement. He stops consorting with whores, but never marries - Tom moves towards a virtuous woman, but the Man is too cynical to do this.
4. Fielding is also steering a middle course between the Dissenters, and the disciples of Bernard Mandeville, who argued that there was no such thing as Virtue, only self-interest and pride. VI.1. (217) The Fable of the Bees; Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits (1714).
Children are brought up to deny their own desires, because this is more convenient for their parents.
The rich, similarly, praise the poor for being hard-working and submissive.
Religion allies itself with the rich and powerful, telling people that if they are humble now they will be exalted in heaven.
People are charitable because it flatters their pride, and because society rewards them for it.
Female virtue is purely strategic; women are as lustful as men, but it is expedient for them to hide it.
Everything we do follows a calculus of pleasure and pain, so we don’t deserve credit for “good” actions.
Mandeville was not a leftist radical, but a cynic: society should recognize and encourage the pursuit of self-interest, because it creates wealth and gives employment to the poor - primitive Christianity has nothing to offer them.
Against Mandeville, Fielding argues:
Self-interest may be true for many, but it cannot be true for all. The existence of virtue is proved by the disinterested benevolence of people like Allworthy (218).
Religion is often perverted by hypocrites, but genuine Christianity exists in some (such as Parson Adams in Joseph Andrews).
Socially, Fielding was a paternalistic conservative who believed in gentlemanly rule to preserve hierarchy, but give everyone rights appropriate to their status. He mistrusted the disorderly selfishness of the new commercial society - “possessive individualism.” (Note how many innkeepers are swindlers).
People should neither get rich nor achieve salvation through individual effort: they are good or bad by nature, and being a gentleman or “low” is given by birth.
Love is a combination of sex (which is coarse, but not selfish), and of “esteem and gratitude.” (218) Many women are sexual hypocrites (431, 449, 455), but not all.
Throughout Tom Jones, Fielding criticizes the perversion of love by the upper-class, homosocial system of property marriage.
Sophia’s proposed marriage to Blifil:
Western wants to join the estates (221-222) and cares nothing about love - marriage is an agreement between two men to transfer property (223).
Allworthy is not against property marriage, but believes that both parties should have the right to refuse a particular suitor (227) [This will be Clarissa’s position against her father and brother.]
Western’s sister tells Sophia she should submit, but take the man she really likes as a lover (234). Fielding damns her as a “politician.”
Fielding’s position: property can be a blessing and a way of doing good to others, but love must be central to the marriage.
Story of Mrs Fitzpatrick (XI.4 - 10) shows what can go wrong in property marriage from the woman’s side - though her solution is wrong.
Towards the end, as Sophia’s position becomes more melodramatic, Fielding moves to a bitter denunciation of “legalized prostitution,” as he calls property marriage (720).
Western compared to the bawd - except that he doesn’t even act out of self-interest, but out of the homsocial code of reciprocity (698).
Allworthy feels there should be a law against this, and that parents become responsible for the consequences (736 - 37). When we give charity we don’t know what the recipient may do, but when we compel marriage we know what the consequences will be.
Western’s reply is that he must be acting unselfishly, because he is spoiling his own chances of re-marriage (737) - but he is driven by a blind faith in the fate of his land.
His sister, more modern-minded, looks higher in her ambition (741) - note how Sophia manipulates her (743).
As always, Fielding does not resolve the question of property marriage by any institutional change, but by making it possible for individuals of good will to avoid its vices. More on this below.
Fielding’s use of the muff:
179: the muff and the homosocial triangle
443: Sophia puts the muff into Tom’s faithless bed
450: the muff becomes Tom’s property rather than Western’s
The last part of the novel shows a convergence between hero and heroine, after their alienation in the inn at Upton. But the property-marriage plot is complicated by the sexual corruptions of London, which threaten to capture both Tom and Sophia, though in different ways - seduction for Tom, force for Sophia.
Sophia is both threatened by her father (as before) and in need of his protection against the aristocratic amorality of Lady Bellaston and Lord Fellamar. She gains in stature by becoming much more than just a maiden in distress, but one who can manipulate too, in the interests of virtue.
The aristocratic plot: Lord Fellamar wants sexual possession of Sophia, and also her £80,000; Lady Bellaston wants to get rid of a rival for Tom’s services. Lord F. will rape Sophia, then “make her amends” by marrying her; Fielding finds this code as detestable as the sexual opportunism of Pamela (654). Even after Fellamar tries and fails, Western’s sister still tries to promote the match (741). It’s lucky for Sophia that her father’s incidental hatred of Lords protects her from this corruption at least (though not that threatened by Blifil).
Sophia is protected by her own genuine hatred for Fellamar, and by the countervailing paternalism of Allworthy, which intervenes in her favor. The danger to Tom, however, is internal - it comes from his own moral weakness.
Tom’s reasons/excuses for falling prey to Lady Bellaston:
1. He is destitute (590), and is therefore no worse morally than a woman who is driven to prostitution in order to survive; and he offers to give all his dirty money to the highwayman’s family (though Mrs Miller only takes £10 out of £50).
2. He needs Lady Bellaston to help him stay in London, pass for a gentleman, and find Sophia - his only alternative would be to go to war, or to sea, and lose Sophia for ever.
3. His gentlemanly code of honor (“gallantry”) requires that a) he must respond when a woman offers a sexual invitation and b) having taken Lady B’s money once, he is obliged to go on sleeping with her.
Points 1) and 2) are legitimate excuses, if not justifications. The problems arise with 3):
Fielding emphasises (rather unkindly) that Lady B. is over-age, over-weight, and has bad breath (596). [Decorum - what is appropriate to one’s age and status] Unlike his previous misdeeds, Tom is here partially excused by not enjoying his infidelity to Sophia.
Tom is not rationalizing a vice or weakness, or acting on a foolish impulse, as he did with Molly and Mrs Waters.
Only gradually does Tom realise how morally corrupt Lady B. is - he didn’t know of her inciting Lord Fellamar to rape Sophia. She is a Mandevillian who cares only about the appearance of virtue (677 - demirep).
Lady B. is cynical about marriage - not believing in love, she only sees property marriage, and wants to protect herself against it. Ironically, Tom exploits this in order to break off with her (679).
622-623 is important for distinguishing between Tom and the code of the male rake, equivalent to Lady Bellaston’s. Having “sowed his wild oats,” Nightingale would be expected to make a marriage of convenience; Tom converts him to see that love is what really counts, and that the rakish code is dishonorable and cruel to defenseless women like Nancy.
The unmasking of Blifil shows that, even now, he is incapable of moral improvement - the implied contrast is with Tom (810)
Benevolence (Tom) must be united with Prudence or Wisdom (Sophia) but this must come from within Tom - Sophia cannot be a Thwackum, or even an Allworthy.
Nietzsche: beauty is the highest form of power, because it operates without compulsion - this is the power to which Tom must submit. Further, Sophia is commended for her true womanly virtue of doing good only by stealth (735-36).
802 - Tom repents to Allworthy and is shown the way ahead, through Prudence; but Mrs Miller tells him that Sophia still thinks him no more than “a good-natured libertine” (805)
815 - Tom submits himself to Sophia’s moral instruction, and is forgiven.
1. His repentance is over-determined, because he is also getting someone he desires sexually, and who is rich. To put it cynically, Fielding makes it convenient for him to be virtuous from now on. (However, Tom is now rich too, so there’s no danger of his being purely opportunistic, as he was with Lady B.).
2. It’s not clear whether even good-natured men, by themselves, are capable of sexual virtue: Sophia rules with a velvet glove, but she still rules. Some women are without morality, but only a woman can be independently moral. Allworthy’s call for a single standard of sexual morality therefore remains impractical, and Fielding’s conclusion may be condemned as sentimental, and as perpetuating stereotypes about male and female attitudes. But perhaps we should just sit back and enjoy the kind of ending that fairy-tales promise.